Rural Training Track Sutter Health Family Medicine Residency - Amador

The Rural Training Track combines training in our “flagship” medical center in Sacramento, CA and our state of the art hospital in rural Jackson, CA. Our mission is to build healthier communities by training superior community-oriented physicians, providing expert person-centered care, and being a catalyst for improving health services in our region.

Message from the Track Director

The Amador County medical community has a long tradition of being a medical student training site through UC Davis School of Medicine Rural-PRIME. That is how I ended up here! Sutter Health has recognized that these enthusiastic local clinicians are a sound foundation for rural residency training.

In early 2019, Sutter Amador Hospital partnered with the Sutter Health Family Medicine Residency Program (FMRP) in Sacramento to apply for a federal Health Resources Services Administration (HRSA) grant to start a Family Medicine Rural Residency Track in Amador County. We received the grant award in July of 2019. We applied to the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and received our accreditation in May of 2020!

The Sutter Family Medicine Rural Amador Residency Track is a 1-2 program, and our inaugural class of residents began in mid-June 2021. The first year will be spent in Sacramento. The second and third years will focus on rural Amador County with the linchpin for training being the Family Medicine Continuity Clinic in Jackson, CA. Rotations will include Inpatient and Emergency Medicine at Sutter Amador Hospital and numerous outpatient experiences with a “longitudinal design” (see Curriculum section for more details).

Sutter Amador Hospital is a not-for-profit rural hospital located in Jackson, California, with 52-licensed beds. It is the only hospital in Amador County serving a population of more than 45,000. As the only residency program in Amador County, residents will have a plethora of opportunities to serve a culturally diverse population who face unique and complex health disparities.  

We have a dedicated group of Sutter and local community clinicians and organizations that we have partnered with to give residents excellent training along with a unique rural perspective on healthcare issues. Our residents will be an integral part of serving our underserved communities in the lovely Sierra foothills. Our goal is to graduate excellent community-oriented Family Medicine physicians who will become the innovative healthcare leaders of the future.

We welcome you to our community and look forward to challenging, yet fun interactions as we learn and explore the wonders of rural medicine together.

Jennifer Shoemaker, M.D., M.P.H.
Track Director